Venezuela's opposition leader has fled to Peru to escape corruption charges, which he said were part of a campaign of political persecution by President Hugo Chávez.

Manuel Rosales, a former presidential candidate and the mayor of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second city, is expected to request political asylum in the Peruvian capital Lima, claiming he would not receive a fair trial in Venezuela.

"He entered as a tourist and as a tourist he can remain for 180 days," Peru's foreign minister, José Antonio García Belaúnde, said yesterday.

Rosales's prosecution and his decision to flee have raised the stakes in a bitter tussle between the Chávez government and opposition leaders.

In recent weeks several opponents of the president have been jailed on corruption charges, threatened with legal action or have had their powers clipped.

"It is very obvious that Manuel Rosales is being politically persecuted," said Omar Barboza, who will succeed Rosales as leader of the party A New Time.

Prosecutors prepared a 21-page report detailing how Rosales, a veteran and powerful figure in his home state of Zulia, allegedly enriched himself with public funds. He went into hiding three weeks ago and is understood to have arrived in Peru last week, with members of his family.

Government supporters scorned depictions of Rosales as a refugee, saying his flight showed guilt as well as cowardice. "He fled to evade justice," said Carlos Escarrá, deputy leader of Chávez's United Socialist party of Venezuela.

The president accused the opposition leader of corruption late last year and said he was "determined to put Manuel Rosales in jail" and "wipe him from the political map".

Emboldened by winning a referendum in February which abolished term limits, Chávez, who controls all important state institutions, has moved to consolidate his self-styled socialist revolution.

Raúl Baduel, a former defence minister-turned vocal government critic, was jailed for three weeks on suspicion of stealing $19m in public funds, a charge he denies. And Antonio Ledezma, the opposition mayor of the capital Caracas, has been emasculated by a law which transferred most of his budget and powers to a new office that answers to the president.

The government has also renewed threats to shut down Globovision, an opposition television network which depicts Chávez as a tyrant.

The tumult in Venezuela contrasts with a tentative detente with the United States. At a regional summit last week, Chávez twice told President Barack Obama, in English, "I want to be your friend." Venezuela's government hailed his handshake with the US leader as historic.